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Do Women Still Get Attention in Online Dating Even If Their Profiles Suck?

Hi Evan ,

I have been reading your information regarding how men have to be unique and different when contact women just because of the sheer numbers of contacts they have. But do women have to do anything extra ordinary? I have looked at a few websites, and some women seem to not really try to attract as much attention as they could. Blurry pictures, pictures of pets, the dreaded bathroom mirror picture (why do they do that), no information in the profile, the list goes on. Do they still get attention and contacts?

Jim

A young attractive woman using a webcam photo could write, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you” as her profile essay and still receive 100 emails a week.

Dear Jim,

A young attractive woman using a webcam photo could write, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you” as her profile essay and still receive 100 emails a week.

So yes, they still get attention and contacts.

However, your question allows me the opportunity to address something that I don’t know I’ve ever addressed before when it comes to online dating – how women sabotage their own experience by not trying harder.

Everyone knows that men’s profiles, on the whole, are even worse than women. We can debate why, but, for the most part, I think it’s ignorance. Most men simply don’t know that a profile is the equivalent of a resume – if you don’t have a good one, you’re not getting called for an interview. Especially in a competitive job market.

Women have the same ignorance about the importance of a profile, except they don’t experience the same failure as men. As a result, they have no way to learn their lesson. As long as women keep receiving a steady stream of generic emails that say, “Hey, great profile. I think we have a lot in common. Would love to learn more about you,” they’re convinced that they actually have great profiles.

They don’t.

The only reason that many attractive women get these “great profile” emails is that the men writing to them need SOMETHING to say. Unless he wants to write a “you’re hot” (or more likely, “your hot”) email, all he can say is “great profile”. Why? Because you didn’t give him anything specific with which to work.

When women ask me (and boy, do they ask me), why do all the WRONG men write to them, I always have a two part response: 1) By your standards, 95% of men are the wrong men. So don’t be too surprised if you’re not enamored with 9 out of 10 emails you receive. It makes perfect sense. 2) Your profile is likely not attracting the small percentage of “right men” out there – which is something that we can easily change.

It’s because we – men and women alike – haven’t truly figured out what makes us unique. And unique profiles not only get more responses, but they get higher quality responses in return.

Yet some women really get indignant – they poured their heart out in their profile, put a ton of effort into saying what they really feel. And when I take a look at it, 9 times out of 10, she did just that. Except Nancy pouring her heart out as a 45-year-old divorcee in Seattle sounds just like April pouring her heart out as a 35-year-old single girl in New York. The lists of adjectives, the lists of hobbies, the lists of bands and countries and books and TV shows, the clichés, the personal philosophy about life and love and honesty and trust. You’ve seen it before. It’s perfectly articulate, perfectly earnest, and perfectly generic because most woman arrive at the same conclusions.

So when every woman’s profile sounds the same, what do men have to write to?

That’s right. Your looks.

And then we wonder why the level of discourse in online flirtation is so abysmal. It’s because we – men and women alike – haven’t truly figured out what makes us unique. And unique profiles not only get more responses, but they get higher quality responses in return.

One of my favorite online dating anecdotes is of a JDate woman I courted in the summer of 2004. She had a wildly entertaining profile, which included this line:“You’re witty and intelligent and consider me fully worthy of the 5,000 gold coins and two camels that my family has offered as dowry.”

My response:

Subject: Low on camels, high on yams

In the Trobriand Islands, anyway, yams are a very popular dowry staple. That’s about all I got out of cultural anthropology from my freshman year of college, but I think it was worth my parents’ $20,000.

In any case, you’re interesting. Very interesting. And, at risk of being cheesy (I risk this a lot), there’s something behind your eyes. It could be an optic nerve or a sinus, but I’m thinking that it’s some sort of intelligence or mischief or both.

If I’m wrong, well, no yams for you.

Evan

If you don’t like the responses you’re getting, it’s incumbent upon you to change how people are reacting to your profile.

She became my girlfriend a month later.

(She dumped me a month after that, but that’s not the point of the story).

Anyway, Jim, I know I’ve hijacked your question to say something that I’ve really wanted to say for awhile, but it’s an important point. If you don’t like the responses you’re getting, it’s incumbent upon you to change how people are reacting to your profile. This is why I offer E-Cyrano profile writing (www.e-cyrano.com), where you can fill out a questionnaire, talk to a writer, and have a one-of-a-kind profile within 48 hours. And if you are really serious about maintaining creative control, I offer all my profile writing secrets to you in my audio series, Finding the One Online (www.findingtheoneonline.com) and even give you a 35-page workbook to practice until you get it right.

At the end of the day, both men and women can coast by on their looks, and never feel compelled to have to improve their profiles. If you’re attractive, you will always get attention. But unless you bring your A-game in your essays, you’re probably not going to get the intelligent, witty responses that you crave.

Comments:

I have looked at a few websites, and some women seem to not really try to attract as much attention as they could. Blurry pictures, pictures of pets, the dreaded bathroom mirror picture (why do they do that), no information in the profile, the list goes on.

Word!

An online personal ad isn’t a Facebook page. You want to make contact with single people who find you attractive. A good picture of your face and a good picture of all of you will help with that. Pictures of your pets, your trip to the 3rd world and your garden will not.

A lot of people will just move on if they can’t get a good idea of
what you look like from your profile.

Evan’s book on the subject is a good read on how to avoid writing
a generic profile. Everybody likes “spending times with friends,
good music and happy people”. As Evan wrote a million times online daters have an “illusion of many choices”, so if your profile is generic, hard to start a conversation with and you have a hair out of place they will click their next buttonbefore giving you a chance.

Oh, if only the guys would read my profile more often. About 98% of the time, they haven’t even bothered. They’ve seen the photo and sent their instant flirt. It’s incredibly annoying; to the point where if someone hasn’t at least appeared to have taken a moment to read my profile, I’m highly inclined to not respond. But I always send the polite “no thanks.”

I hear you in spades! I’m sitting on a roof in my profile picture, my one-line summary is a cryptic remark about M&Ms, and my profile launches straight into a one-sentence summary indicating that I taught middle school in Korea and am renovating a 19th century house. I practically spoon-feed them things to say, and I still get, “Great profile. I love your pictures.” (Please, guys, don’t say “pictures” in the plural and then not say a word about the one where it appears that I just set a student’s hand on fire in English class.)

I’ve done two tweaks: My “What I think about a lot” section now says I’m thinking about how to tweak my profile so that men find it interesting and soliciting suggestions, and my “Message me if” section now says that I’d light up like the 4th of July if a man said something specific about my profile and/or pics, and adds that if he’s too shy to think of something on his own he can just say, “Nice roof” or “Did you really set that kid’s hand on fire?”

It’s only been about six hours so I’m still waiting to see if this improves the quality of the messages I get.

The question of Do Women Still Get Attention in Online Dating Even If Their Profiles Suck?
The answer as we all know is,of course they will.This is planet earth and men will respond to any and all profiles because it takes very little time & effort.Most of these men by the way would never approach 99.9% of these women in public for a myriad of reasons.
The better question may be…. “how come women who’s profiles suck,won’t respond to most men even those with high quality pics and a high quality interestingly unique profile?”

Sadly in the online world, both sexes judge whether a profile “sucks” or is “quality” by 98% photos & 2% rest of profile. Of course for men,we have to have not only good photo’s (be an 8,9,or10)but we have to be educated,have a good job title/income, and of course be TALL…lol Women?? You just have to have the PHOTOS and the responses roll in and always will. It will always be about “options”,”supply & demand”.

If only so many women were approachable….. Women act aloof in public. The only place they don’t are social environments where they give off negative vibes unless the “right” one ask them to dance or join them in a drink. This is why PUA has picked up and taken off, because it uses a woman’s instincts against them. As Adam Corolla has said (not like I agree with him very much) is that you would think women would grow out of liking artsy, car-dude, douche bag, dangerous guy by their mid 20’s but it continues deep into their 30’s!
Men are told its evil to consider a woman by her looks only. Ummm its worked that way for a very long time. This is why women are upset and often depressed as they get into their 40’s…. The campaign to make women in their 30’s and 40’s more viable to men of all ages started in the 1990’s.
Men don’t care about bad profiles if the woman is attractive, guess what? = Pump And Dump

Tonysam, it often seems that way, doesn’t it? Yet, the fact is that at least on most sites, the first thing we get to draw our attention to someone is…yep, a photo. So what do you think most everybody does in deciding which profiles to even read? Yep, the decision is based on that photo… and that’s to be expected, because when it comes to attraction, looks DO matter… and to both genders. Sure, on balance, most men may give more weight to looks than most women, but the difference is more a matter of emphasis, rather than of looks being everything to men, and irrelevant to women. Bottom line: your profile (or mine) is only as good as the weakest thing in it. If your photo(s) suck, it’s not going to help much to write a great essay. If we get both of those done as well as possible, it’s still no guarantee of success. If those we’re interested in don’t want someone of say, our age, our body type, our ethnic/religious background, w’re going to have to wait for someone to come along who does, no matter how strong our profile is. It’s not a matter of a great profile being some kind of “magic bullet” for attracting someone who has no interest in us; that is NOT going to happen. It’s just another tool (a pretty important one) for possibly getting the attention of someone who MIGHT be interested, rather than being lost in the shuffle of a massive numbers game. At the end of the day any man or woman is going to have to (1) put the best profile possible out there, while remaining authentic, (2)have at least SOMETHING really going for them that attracts the opposite gender, (3) send or sort through a LOT of emails, and (4) depending on how selective he/she is , have a LOT of patience, persistence, and maybe some luck. It’s competition, and the competition is intense; get outsmarted, or outworked, or even outwaited, and chances are very good you WILL lose. No point whining or blaming the opposite sex, or the dating sites; we all have to do the best we can with the tools available and the material we have to work with.

3.2

Christina

It really, really helps if you say something specific about her profile or picture. I’d be thrilled to get a message that just said “M&Ms?” because then I’d know the guy had at least paid attention to SOMETHING in my profile.

Generic messages give the impression that the man’s criterion is “I wouldn’t want to gnaw off my own arm to get away without waking her in the morning.”

And the best profile on earth isn’t going to help if she thinks you’re spamming her.

No doubt of that (as those of us guys who have written enough emails have learned), and where we have a profile like yours to work with, it’s easy; no problem there in finding a hook (or a couple of them) to hang a good, individualized initial email on. What you’ve done appears to provide several to choose from, AND, you’ve provided more in your pics; I would be surprised if you didn’t see some very good results from that. You’ve made it about as easy as possible for a guy to send you an email that obviously ISN’T “cut-and-paste” spam. Unfortunately, all too many women don’t do profiles like that; their verbal section is brief and totally generic, and there’s not even a picture with something zany, or an unusual expression; I’ve sometimes had to look at the background of a picture, to try to find something specific to her to ask about. Beyond that point doing anything remotely creative with an initial email is pretty much a lost cause for me, and I don’t even email those at all.

All that said, there will be a lot of guys who will search through pictures, never read a profile, and simply spam the inboxes of all women whose photos they like; I’ve even seen software for sale that automates most of the process. ( I can’t imagine that approach working very well, but there’s a sucker born every minute, and apparently a lot of guys with minimal writing skills looking for a quick fix.

I just want to add that while most everyone’s profile could probably use at least a little tweaking, including my own, I have specific details in my profile that make it easy for someone with a likeness to grab on to, but they rarely do. And I promise; they’re not outrageous and bizarre. 😉 Really.

I don’t think the generic emails I receive are due to a total sameness in my profile. I think it’s due to first, copy and paste emails sent to a lot of women, in hopes of their dart hitting a target, and how most people do not have the articulate and creative writing gene, as you do Evan. 🙂 For those that struggle, they could have seen your former girlfriend’s profile and have been dumb struck as to what to say to her. I think some men (and women) read a smart and witty profile and much like seeing a pretty woman and feeling too intimidated to say hello, they feel intimidated by her words.

What continues to absolutely boggle my mind is these 2 and 3 sentence profiles from “college grad’s” and “Post Grad’s”.

Latest “college grad” profile for “Me and My Ideal Match” we get…“I always try to look for the positive. I like to socialize and stay home. I’m interested in meeting someone who is happy with who they are. Someone who understands life is short so we need to enjoy it now.” She has 1 cute pic,she’ll get 75 responses.

Latest “Post Grad” profile for the same:Despite all odds, I believe the impossible can come true. Life has shown me that anything is possible with a little faith, work and courage. She has 1 head shot I’m sure she has more responses than she can handle and we have no idea how “big” she is.

If I told my 7th grade niece to make a profile she could do much better I can assure you even without my help….lol

I had a very funny handle when I was on Match and my first profile I talked about moving across the country by myself, starting a Buffy the Vampire Slayer “club” where I cooked dinner for all my friends once a week, and starting a two-hand touch “club” that eventually grew to 20 or 30 people. I also outed myself as an English major and declared war on adverbs and adjectives in online dating profiles. It was a lot of fun! I am pretty sure that I read a bunch of women’s profiles before writing mine and decided that telling 2 or 3 funny stories was better than listing the most generic version of my interests 🙂

EMK, glad you brought this up, this is something I complain about whenever I go through an online dating stretch. Like right now. Gents, if you really want some insight, you might try two strategies. First, do a search on women looking for men and read a ton of guy profiles. You’ll almost immediately see patterns and trends of mediocrity in both the writing and the pics. This will give you ideas about how to stand apart.
The second strategy is a bit more insidious but tremendously insightful. Set up a fake profile with women’s pictures and fake profile text that is poorly written. Track the response rate you get. If you’re really hardcore about it, pay for a subscription to this “scout” account and note the quality of the emails that you’re getting. I draw the line at actually responding to emails and you can debate the ethical considerations of this technique.
I have a pretty good profile, not awesome, and I write great emails. Despite all that, I get about a 10% response rate to my emails. So even if you’re doing everything right, it’s still a massive numbers game.
I feel really lucky, though, because I just met an awesome gal via an online site.

If you get a 10% response rate you’re doing very good actually. To do more than that, its LYING! The opposite is true for women. Like I said before, watch Amy Webb’s TED Talk, its very constructive. But of of course being a woman it wouldn’t have been TOO hard to find a man. She had pigeon hole’d herself; IE making it harder than it needed to be. Tone down on the “I know Japanese fluently” crap, guys really could care less about such items. That might draw in fanatical Anime fans who like Cosplay and Sub-tittled content but most guys are not that hardcore. Its beside the point, she’s married with a kid, so mission accomplished.
For men however, a better profile and better pictures help but overall the response rate is poor. As I said, you don’t have to work NEARLY as hard to attract the attention of a foreign woman.
Lastly I will say people get what they deserve because they spend too much time narrow casting in a multicultural environment.

Lance is right.Setting up “recon” profiles teaches you sooo much…lol I never stop learning about women this way and they always continue to shock me. I get about the same 10% response to my profile…lol and believe me ….we’re lucky !!

@JB #8- but are you really learning a lot? All of the things you’ve learned (women respond more often to tall, good-looking men with money) you already knew! Shoot, i’ve never set up any recon profiles and I already knew it lol.

I would think looking at profiles of ‘the competition’ would prove to be more useful as you could see what they are doing and be sure to set yourself apart.

So if you’re short, average looking and have a service sector job……
I guess women are expecting these guys to either get more education, be a kiss-ass at work to move up or ? At some point when men demand more responsibility he will do what’s necessary to increase his income, sometimes illegally.
But without any meaningful relationships on the horizon, shoot you don’t need to be a scientist or researcher to understand that the basics to being a man only cost about $10-25K. Girlfriends and Wives ALWAYS INCREASE COST.

Where’s the “equality” in that?
The truth is this and read carefully….
It could be argued that the standard middle class life in America cost at least $100,000 a year. So if your annual income is less than $50K… = SOL
Again that would live BBW’s, some Single Mothers and Black women to date…..
If none of those options are appealing, get your passport and don’t look back.

@Jennifer: The primary benefit of the scout/recon profile is actually reading what guys are writing to attractive women. You can’t get that any other way. When you read, say, 100 emails from guys, you have a huge database to draw from when crafting you own emails, which of course will need to stand apart from the legions of douchebags you just scouted. I think this info is so valuable for winning at online dating that it’s worth paying for the extra subscription for at least a month, perhaps more.

Completely agree about the recon. It is not necessary, but it is insightful. I have not done it because I read other people’s experiences in this strategy, and it did change my emails. And I was never the one liner “you’re hot” variety, I actually put in some effort, but it was helpful to see some examples of “so THIS is a compelling email.” Generic first email writing advice is just that: generic.
Of course, there was the OKCupid analysis where you are more likely to receive a response the longer you write, but given the extra time involved, you are more likely to communicate with more people if you keep your emails short and simply write more. So my strategy is simple: if I encounter an engaging profile, I engage her with a thoughtful email. If her profile sucks, I don’t put forth any effort other than copying and pasting something quirky and random that I expect most of them to think “wtf?,” but the creative, bohemian ones who are my type sometimes engage and then tell me “that was so different, I had to respond.” Then I wear a big shit eating grin across my face as I think to myself “I had to say that because your profile SUCKED!”

I don’t expect a huge effort from a first message, but I don’t think “Can name one thing that interests him about my profile and/or pics” is a really high bar. In my POF profile there’s a picture of me apparently setting a kid’s hand on fire, captioned, “Best English class ever!” If I’m giving you a flaming child and you can’t come up with SOMETHING to say other than “Hi, Beautiful! You’re profile is so sweet and amazing,” I’m baffled as to why.

@Lance #11- I hadn’t look at it that way before, but now I understand and can appreciate that reasoning.

The only reasons i’d heard for having recon profiles before was what i mentioned in my post above or to ‘check up’ on someone- like if you wrote a girl but she ignored you, ‘testing’ her to see if she’d write back to your recon profile. Or if a girl told you she met someone else, ‘testing’ her to see if she’d answer your recon profile. Those are the things I don’t get.

@Jennifer:Or if a girl told you she met someone else, testing her to see if she’d answer your recon profile” Obviously it’s to see if she’s lying when she could just say “I don’t think we’re a match”
Or the vindictive side of me could come out and my recon profile can give her a taste of her own medicine.

Sometimes I use them for the same reason Lance does and other times I’ll use them to get women to add more photo’s to their “1 bad photo profile”. You’d be shocked at how fast women ADD new pics when a “10” tells them to because that’s when they figure out that one bad pic isn’t going to attract a guy with 4 great ones…..lol Then I can see what she REALLY looks like…..Yes,it works.

“like if you wrote a girl but she ignored you, testing her to see if she’d write back to your recon profile”. Well if she’s a “3” and she ignores me and responds to my “10”recon,Then I know clearly she’s delusional……lol Aren’t we all?….LOL

Nothing matters….. that’s the point. It’s all part of the fun of the game. She doesn’t “send” the recon 10 more pics. She adds them to her profile for all of us to see & judge. So in essence I’m helping everyone by making these women improve or in some cases make “worse” their profiles.We’ve all seen people who add photo’s and lower their value because the “new” pics are recent…lol Then you go “Ohhh,that’s what they look like NOW”….LOL I’ve seen it go work both ways.

I find it amazing how you now have to have a background in creative writing in order to attract a date.

Sarcasm aside, I agree with this advice. But I also find this is the frustrating part of online dating – many people get their friends to help them write profile/letters, but even if they don’t, people who make good writers don’t necesseraly make good bf/gf’s. I realize it’s what you have to do to atract someone but it’s so artificaial – you have to MEET the person in order to tell.

I’m gonna be honest: few people take much time or effort to put up great photos or write an interesting profile. So, the ones that do immediately stick out.
My profile is great. I’m not bragging–it just is. I get lots of compliments on it. I put something like, “message me if you like my special brand of crazy” and a guy (too far away to date) wrote, “You’re my special brand of awesome!”
BUT. On another dating site, where I actively blog, I have a sock puppet profile so that I can blog there anonymously without worrying that my dates will know I am writing about my dating adventures. The profile has almost no text. It simply says, “I’m just here for blogging.” I stupidly put up a VERY attractive photo that I copied from a UK hairstyle site, and I got TONS of email from men. Most of it went something like this, “What an adorable mug…” “OMG, you are SOOOOOO PRETTY” and etc. The difference between the amount of email I’d received before and after putting up the photo was completely shocking. I had to take the photo down because the men just did not understand why I was there. And as soon as I took the photo down, the emails dropped to zero. It was an interesting experience.

Which shows how superficial men are. Emailing a fake profile that is marked as such.

This is the problem with some people, sending out thousands of inappropriate emails to inappropriate matches. They don’t know a thing about that person, and in your case there was nothing to know, it was all fake.

Which is why I am very selective. And how I let the girls email me, mostly. For a man, I realize how different that is.

Wondering: even though your opposite-sex recon profile may get you hundreds of examples of e-mails sent by members of your same sex, what is there to tell you which ones members of the opposite sex would actually respond to? That is, how do you separate the “good” e-mails from the “bad” ones (aside from the obvious ones that no one would respond to)? You can only guess, or select the ones you would respond to.

It is an interesting commentary, no? See, I know I have the intelligence and the confidence. I also have a pretty face. I don’t have the rest of the “physicality” to go with it, and I’m honest about that in my profiles. I never try to hide it. As a result, I don’t date much. I make the effort however. I admit I struggled with being angry about it for a while, but have since grown indifferent.

Anger and indifference are such obstacles to finding happiness in dating (I think the latter is a form of sadness, in my case at least)- but for me, they can be nearly impossible to overcome.

I guess the biggest problem is trying to figure out what you should be doing to attract the members of the opposite sex. For me, both online and in real life, the problem has always been that I get the ‘view’ (or when I’m out in real life, a smile, a line), but it ends up into…nothingness. My cousin (whom I look like)- has only one line in her profile and gets thousands of responses- I’ve got a great pic, a well-thought out profile (where I have a literature quote in the beginning), and it’s an empty well online (that is, in getting responses from guys who speak and can write the English language).

Online dating isn’t necessarily easy for anyone. Maybe it’s their weight. Or their skin color. Or their religious beliefs (or lack thereof). Or their desire to have no children. Anything that takes you outside the “norm” for your area’s dating pool is going to make it harder.

When the guys talk about who they contact on online sites, I suspect it’s the 8s, 9s, and 10s (which is understandable). So if you’re a really nice looking female and nothing else all that abnormal, online dating will be relatively easy. And probably the same for the guys who are 9s & 10s. Either they’ll get lots of e-mails and can choose the cream of the crop, or if they send out an e-mail they have a supremely high likelihood of getting a (good) response back. But if you’re not in the top 10-20% looks wise then online dating is going to be work.

I had a lengthy discussion with my guy friend about this just this afternoon. I felt like he couldn’t understand my experience. I don’t know if this is because of difference in gender or if I’m applying too much logic or what. I sent him the link to this blog because he thinks I’m not trying hard enough. I made an effort to write a witty, interesting, and unique essay, and I even put up a full length picture with my others as I will not hide my body type. I had to explain to him that I’m out there but I can only do so much. Men are looks-driven creatures and I have no power to make that be different. He says I have to keep myself out there, which I do. I also had to explain to him that knowing it is what it is, if I spend most of my time being not really caring whether I’m getting dates or not is just how I think a lot people roll. We have lives. We go to work, pay our bills, raise our kids, hang out with our families and friends.

I agree, anger and indifference aren’t helpful. However, what I told my friend is, I don’t have the financial resources to be on several different sites on the slight chance I might meet somebody. Many of them require you pay to even see who has e-mailed you, let alone respond to those e-mails.

I’m not sure indifference is the right word; maybe pragmatic is more it. I don’t want to be chained to a computer waiting for contact on a dating site. I know what I can control with regard to a better on-line dating experience (which I have done), and what I can’t. I believe if a man is interested and my physicality doesn’t bother him (and I’m not even fat as in “DAYUM” ala Gabriel Iglasias) I respond, am witty and charming, etc. I’ve done what I can do. The rest of it I can’t get emotionally involved in.

But I get a pretty good number of inquiries from women, because of my crazy long profile. It’s full of tests, setting expectations. It’s sure not for everyone.

Occasionally I get a message “what a long profile, good job!” (I got that one this week). I respond, in a simple way. I mention something from hers if it’s interesting. If she is interested, she can continue.

Sometimes I get an inquiry, “too long, but I read the whole thing”. I respond to those if I am interested. Sometimes I just look at their profile, and they can see that I did. Your move!

Most profiles in OLD are incoherent. Sound stupid. Full of misspellings and grammatical errors.

Men’s might be quite a bit worse than women’s. The bar is not very high.

“Men’s might be quite a bit worse than women’s. The bar is not very high.”

Yeah, a quick look through OLD sites shows you how little people are willing to try. A weak effort for something that could change your life.

It makes the serious ones look good, but probably also makes them seem like they’re trying too hard when a lot of people (mostly men, but a fair number of women) don’t even bother to read the profile. They just e-mail based on pictures alone in many cases.

I do sales/AD writing. I developed my OLD profile using some of those techniques. So yeah, it might make me look good to the women it’s targeted at. The superficial ones, not so much, which is how it was designed. That was intentional. I tweaked it over a couple years until it resonates with my target audience, since the first thing I need is to be able to carry on a conversation with her.

Since I have been single I am often surprised at how many people are just uninteresting to talk to. They don’t have much to say, they can’t discuss current events, nothing.

I used to read the local newspaper daily, I think that helps a lot, because you know a little about what’s going on, you have some background. The newspaper was quite different from reading a story on a website, since someone else selected what you might find interesting, and often they were things if you were looking for them online you would never have read that. So that does help. I don’t read the daily paper anymore, but I do blog. A lot. On several subjects.

I have people all the time say to me “you are a really good conversationalist” I’ve had a few women on the dating sites say to me after an initial phone call “what a great call that was,” one said how most men are so hard to get anything out of on an initial phone call.

It’s blogging, we are all blogging here, we are the cream of the crop communication wise. If you were not articulate you would not want to blog like all the people here. So we are all top weighted. I read the news, I interact with people online on a number of subjects that interest me. I am a generalist, I can discuss medicine, construction, hard sciences with people I meet, many say they were surprised I knew that much about something that specialized. But I read, I study, that’s all it is.

We are all a good class of clientele here on EMK’s blog. Higher than most, especially on the dating sites.

Maybe we should have an EvanMarkKatz blogger’s mixer on a weekend in Lenexa, KS.

We might not get any dates there but I am sure the conversation would be on fire.

26.1.2

Buck25

I have to agree with that last observation, Grenoble; I’ve women complain about men not reading profiles, but at least a few women respond off a photo alone…seems to be the same old :just throw something up against the wall and see if it sticks” mentality.

I was about to comment on Not Jerry’s post 26.1 above, and I see he’s posted in again. There are some good ideas in both posts; the profile strategy he’s using sounds similar to what I’ve been experimenting with recently, and my results so far seem promising as well. It DOES take confidence and a certain attitude to take that approach, since both the length and the content fly in the face of a lot of conventional wisdom.

In my experience, we have to know our target demographic. Not Jerry, would you tell us what age range you’re working with? I ask, because most of the “less is more” school of profile thought seems to be aimed at a younger set (say under 40), while in my target range (55 -65), I’ve found longer (provided it’s properly fine tuned) seems to generate more response. Anyone else with thoughts on that?

One thing I think we men have to remember-this is a marketing problem, but we don’t have to “sell” our entire target group on the idea that we’re the perfect relationship candidate (I doubt any of us could actually do that, but in the beginning, that’s what a lot of us try to do). All our profile really has to do, is arouse their curiosity enough to make at least some of them want to find out more about us (and that’s much more realistic).

Emails seem to follow a different pattern; there, at least initially I’ve found that being concise and friendly (but not over-enthusiastic) with an observation on the profile and a related question or two seems to get the best results.

Agree on the “top-weighted” comment; aside from some rancorous exchanges, must of the dialogue here is quite a bit more intelligent than most profiles and emails we read on a dating site

Buck25, I am indeed in an older age group, pretty much right where you are.

I think you are right, the 20 somethings do less in the area of a profile, but ya know, when you are at the beginning like that, you are wanting to have a family, children, you have your whole life ahead of you. Your vision is different. You have genetics to think about, who would be a good father/mother for my children? Stuff like that. So looking at the pictures is important at that stage. Maybe the profile is NOT as important.

For people like us, not like that at all. We have been there, we have a vision of past mistakes, we have a vision of what we want, and what we don’t want. Mistakes we don’t want to repeat.

It is marketing. I do that, so this fit right in. It took some time to develop but I am not unhappy with the results, so far.

Not that I get much response, I am sure I get hardly any compared to some. But I self select out the ones I wouldn’t want to talk to. That’s the attitude thing you mentioned. Some would want more responses. I prefer the kind I want. And I don’t agree to talk on the phone or meet very soon, I mention that in the profile. By the time I do, sometimes they are panting. Heh. Part of the process.

OLD does kind of suck. Heh. EMK will diss me for that!

There are a lot of smart people here, so sure, the writing here is often pretty perceptive. Top weighted.

Even those that I disagree with, I still respect. Even Karmic! We do love you! We really do. Wanna meet us all in Lenexa, KS?

27

starthrower68

A-L, I don’t initiate. I thought that was an Evan rule for women but maybe I misintepreted it.

Well, I’ve contacted guys, and gotten responses saying they want to meet up asap. The weird thing is- these same guys were ones that had ‘viewed’ my profile, and didn’t even bother to ‘wink’ (not that I’m a wink fan or anything). Is it me, or does that make no sense? Why, if they are interested (otherwise, I assume they would have ignored my e-mail, and not responded saying they want to chat and meetup asap), would they not make a move first? I don’t know…I hope I’m not going to have to do all the chasing in this online thing.

*sigh*- this is why I always avoid online dating- see? My chill, positive vibe that I’ve (kind of, a little) cultivated in the past few months is cracking already.

“The weird thing is- these same guys were ones that had ‘viewed’ my profile, and didn’t even bother to ‘wink’ (not that I’m a wink fan or anything). Is it me, or does that make no sense?” That’s easy to answer. It’s because after the 100th wink or email sent with zero response it’s easy to recoil from the rejection and just not send them anymore. It sucks getting rejected, even online. So for confidence and ego self preservation men on online dating will be reluctant to send any kind of email because they know there’s a 90% chance of rejection. If you knew that you faced a 90% rejection rate wouldn’t you think twice about making the first move?

If you are a woman, you just have to expect that a certain portion of the men are going to want to meet immediately. Some part of that wants to meet for sex immediately. Maybe all of them, I just don’t know.

As The Forgotten One said, men send messages and get hardly any response. It is disheartening. It’s hard to get yourself to do it after a while. I wrote about it in my profile.

So to the adult women, I don’t think if you see something interesting you need to stand on a principle here and wait to see if he contacts you. You might be waiting a long time.

Several possible answers to your “weird thing” comment above: it’s possible some of these guys might have liked your profile, but hesitated; maybe they weren’t sure what to write; maybe they didn’t have a lot of online confidence, and just procrastinated-that happens, with both genders, I suspect. As for them not having sent a wink, some women actually discourage that in their profiles-they want the man to steep right up and send an email. I’ve actually stopped sending winks on Match, because it can be construed as lacking confidence and/or real interest. If a woman’s profile gives me something to work with, I can come up with an adequate email in five minutes anyway; it’s not that difficult after enough practice (which is something any man who persists at OLD is going to get lots of!).

TFO, I feel your pain on that 90% rejection rate, and you can be doing a lot more right than wrong, and still get that. It used to really grate on me too, and it can be both hard on a man’s ego, and a real confidence killer…if you let it be. OLD is a different dating tool that requires its own skill set, even when you’re confident and relatively proficient in real world dating. I won’t tell you rejection doesn’t suck, because it does, real world or online. We’re men, we do most of the approaching, and we get most of the rejection, in either environment. Toughen up, chin up, man up and keep plowing through it, learning as you go. It’s part of being a man. Look at it this way: it’s one thing if your wife, or longtime girlfriend rejects you; that hurts like hell, and it’s understandable; but why invest that much emotion in the opinion of one woman (or a thousand women) online who you’ve never even met? All you’ve got invested in that, is an email (and maybe some unrealistic aspirations). That’s it. Is that worth being hurt over? Not to me, it’s not.

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